In the field of electronic systems there is an incessant competitive pressure among manufacturers to drive the performance of their equipment up while driving down production costs. This is particularly true regarding forming electronic devices such as transistors in IC's, where each new generation of IC must provide increased performance, particularly in terms of an increased number of devices and higher clock frequencies, while generally being smaller or more compact in size. As the density and clock frequency of IC's increase, they accordingly generate a greater amount of heat. However, the performance and reliability of IC's are known to diminish as the temperature to which they are subjected increases, so it becomes increasingly important to adequately dissipate heat from IC environments.
With the advent of high performance IC's and their associated packages, electronic devices have required more innovative thermal management to dissipate heat. Increasing speed and power in processors, for example, generally carry with it a “cost” of increased heat in the microelectronic die that must be dissipated.